Our Transparent Government

The Freedom of Information Act is in desperate need of reform, says Brian Simboli in his On the Square piece today. FOIA is a useful tool for defenders of religious freedom (and for concerned citizens in general), but its implementation is broken and prone to abuse:

The government often has limited willingness or ability to fulfill [FOIA] requests. Even if it is able, the private party can be asked to take on the sometimes significant expense of fulfillment. In the case of the Diocese of Pittsburgh, its lawyers were told fulfilling the requests would take three to five years and could cost them more than $1.8 million. After months of correspondence the Diocese got the bill down to $25,000, but supplying the information would still take at least three years.

What can defenders of religious liberty do? Simboli has a few ideas on how to reform FOIAto read them, click here .